Maternal Muse

ARIZONA MUSE may have a more successful modelling career now than before she had her three-year-old son Nikko but, unlike many other models, she didn't feel the pressure to get back on the catwalk as soon as she gave birth.

"There are plenty of models who have children," she said. "At first I was like, 'I'm going to be fat forever!' I think we all feel that way after we have a baby. I threw away so many clothes thinking that it would be so depressing having them sitting in my drawer when they're never going to fit me. I got rid of my favourite pair of jeans, which of course would fit me now. You just have to give your body time. You can't have a three-month-old baby and think, 'That's it for me.' I tell mothers that you have to wait a whole year before you start judging your body, before you start working on it. Just give yourself a whole year of rest… I think my body was better after I had a child, actually. I prefer my body now to what it was like before I had Nikko - although I exercise now and I didn't then."

"I thought, 'I have a child now," she told the Telegraph. "I have to support him and I have to support myself. I think I can do this.' So I gave it a try back in New York… I started out not travelling. I started working in April when Nikko was one, and the following September was when I did [the catwalk] shows... Babies need to be with their mummies, in my opinion, and we were really lucky to be able to do that."